National Geographic: The magazine redesigned for your phone

Last week National Geographic Magazine announced the launch of their new "mobile magazine" designed specifically for the iPhone. Joe Zeff Design worked along side NG Creative Director Bill Marr, Acting Director of Digital Publishing Lisa Lytton and Interactive Developer Jaime Hritsik to rethink one of the world's most admired magazines for the 4-inch screen.

"When you consider that there are two to three times as many iPhones as iPads in circulation, and that people spend much more time on their phones than their tablets, the idea of a mobile magazine becomes irresistible." Said Zeff about the magazine which is featured in the app store as "new and noteworthy".

This is no "shrinky dink" version of the print or ipad app. Checkout some highlights and insight after the jump...

Zeff describes the process as basically disassembling National Geographic and putting it back together in a way that they felt best suited an iPhone. Some of the highlights:

An animated cover, naturally.

Each feature is spliced into as many as four activity-driven sections -- Read, Look, Watch and Listen for text, photos, videos and audio.

HTML photo galleries with captions you can tap to hide.

Audiobook versions of each feature so you can listen to each article while doing other things.

Live galleries updated daily with photographs from readers, staff and news sources.

A daily jigsaw puzzle to keep people coming back.

And much, much more.

Zeff: We came away from the experience with a greater appreciation for National Geographic and its mission: to inspire people to care about the planet. We attended a showing by photographer George Steinmetz -- yes, that George Steinmetz -- inside a darkened room at National Geographic's Washington, D.C. headquarters. As always, George's work was breathtaking, documenting myriad aspects of everyday life in a country that was off-limits to most. When the lights came on, Editor Chris Johns spoke decisively: "The world needs to see these pictures." And that's how they roll at National Geographic, motivated not by awards or advertisements but by the unselfish mission of preserving our world for future generations.